And yet this is not an exaggeration of what most of us do when our
attention is called to defects of character. When we excuse and
explain and tell how clean the other side of our face is, we are
putting ourselves positively on the side of the smooch. So we are
putting ourselves entirely on the side of the illness or the pain or
the oppression of difficult circumstances when we give excuses or
resist or pretend not to see fault in ourselves, or when we confess
faults and are contented about them, or when we give all our
attention to what is disagreeable and no attention to the normal way
of gaining our health or our freedom.
Then all these expressions of self or of illness are to us positive,
and our efforts against them only negative. In such cases, of
course, the self possesses us as surely as the grip possesses us
when we succumb entirely to all its horrors and make no positive
effort to yield out of it. And the possession of the self is much
worse, much deeper, much more subtle. When possessed with
selfishness, we are laying up in our subconsciousness any number of
self-seeking motives which come to the surface disguised and compel
us to make impulsive and often foolish efforts to gain our own ends.
The self is every day proving to be the enemy of the man or woman
whom it possesses.
God leaves us free to obey Him or to choose our own selfish way, and
in His infinite Providence He is constantly showing us that our own
selfish way leads to death and obedience to Him leads to life.
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